I remember my mother dragging me to go attend the Education for Life- Behavior Change Process workshop in November of 1994 held at Emmaus Center-Katikamu. I must say I owe my mother a lot for introducing me to Youth Alive. I had just finished my senior four at the time and the 7 days seminar answered a lot of questions in my life (spiritual, emotional, mental and physical). In that workshop I explored why I had low self esteem, self confidence and all the root causes of my behavioral patterns. It was 7 days of deep soul searching and I came out renewed and I made 5 value statement commitments: abstinence, value & respect for life and others, love God and honesty & integrity of character. Now that am married with two wonderful boys, leading national organization, leading a healthy and proactive lifestyle; it’s all down to the informed and responsible choices I made 14 years ago.
Youth Alive has for the last 15 years through many interventions especially through forming positive peer support groups called Youth Alive Clubs in schools and communities continued to form characters of millions of Ugandans. One of the best if not the best song writer and singer Silver Kyagulanyi confesses that Youth Alive was very instrumental in giving him the confidence to develop his talent. He vividly remembers writing and singing his first song in the 1995 Youth Alive national Music festival under the theme “Youth Arise and Shine”. There are millions of testimonies besides mine and Silvers’.
Youth Alive we pride ourselves in promoting life and family values and in the face of HIV/AIDS, we offer the best holistic intervention of addressing the root causes not mere symptoms of risky sexual behaviors. Our approach is to motivate children, adolescents and young adults to dream and have ambitions and take the needed steps to achieve these dreams and ambitions. Behavior change though difficult is possible, it works, it has worked for me and millions of other African youth who are contributing effortlessly to be apart of an AIDS free generation. In this regard this webpage will be a great resource for the millions of children, adolescents, young adults, parents, teachers and community leaders.
